Commander Keen IV: Secret of the Oracle is a platform game for DOS where you play the role of Billy Blaze, a boy-genius with a penchant for saving the world. Your faster-than-light radio has intercepted some plans by the Shikadis to destroy the galaxy, so you hop in your Bacon-With-Beans Megarocket and head towards the planet Gnosticus IV where the Oracle will be able to answer some questions about the invasion. Unfortunately, when you arrive the Elders have been kidnapped and taken to the Shadowlands.

It is the first episode in the Goodbye, Galaxy! series and it was a major upgrade from the first Commander Keen trilogy. It has better graphics, improved sound, and many technical enhancements. The game features 8-directional smooth-scrolling EGA graphics, responsive controls, and a crisp look. It could have easily been seen on a console system, but it instead gave merit to the action PC games of the time. You can jump, pogo, shoot, climb, and swim your way through several levels in your attempts to save the Gnosticus Elders.

Contents

Screenshots

Title screen.

Wandering the map.

Shooting slugs in Border Village.

Pogo-sticking in front of the slug statue.

Swimming away from the dope fish.

Idling in the Oasis.

Music

VGMPF Album Art

Commander Keen IVs music fits perfectly with the game. It's lighthearted and upbeat, just like the game itself. Bobby Prince wrote the music from ground up for the Sound Blaster FM synthesizer since the availability of true wave table synthesizers was uncommon at the time. He used Sequencer Plus Gold for the composing itself.

A couple of upgraded higher-quality MIDI files were made available on Bobby Prince's website and are included in the rip download.

The titles were conceived of and verified by Bobby Prince directly. For the unreleased tracks, the titles come from the file names of an archive supplied by John Romero.

Credits

Game Rip

The IMF files were ripped from the Huffman compressed Audio.CK4 file, using the look up stored in the LZ Compressed EXE file. The IMF music was played with Nuked OPL3 emulator. The order of the music files matches the order in the game rip.

The archive also includes MIDI versions of several songs which are remakes arranged by the music's composer Bobby Prince to try and capture the originally intended sound before the FM Synthesis downgrade.